Computer Chronicles: As Important Today As It Was Decades Ago

I have a secret I want to share with you. On my science and tech podcast, Sovryn Tech, the opening segment of the show is called “Random Access”. And the secret is, I’m not the first tech journalist to have a segment with that name. It was originally used by the great Stewart Cheifet for his now classic PBS computer news show: Computer Chronicles.

Running from 1983-2002, Computer Chronicles was a staple of tech journalism, and could do what much of the rest of tech journalism couldn’t: It could show you computers and tech in action, in real-time…no relying on pictures in a magazine or listening to a radio show without any visuals. It was The Screen Savers or This Week In Tech of its day, and Stewart Cheifet always made things interesting.

Myself, growing up (I was born in 1981) I watched this show endlessly. If I had techno lust a good chunk of my life, Computer Chronicles was feeding it (until shows like Cnet Central and The Screen Savers hit television). The matter-of-fact style of the show, and the fact that it didn’t treat the viewer like an idiot made it an engaging watch. And in its own (serious) “nerdy” way, it made tech cool while it ran…and it’s near 20 year history is nothing to sneeze at, especially in the tech world.

But here’s another secret: I still watch it. The entire series is available on YouTube (and perhaps on a torrent site), and watching the episodes gives you an incredible sense of history. Re-watching the show even today is one of the many ways–aside from reading actual books and using my fairly good memory–that I’m able to lay out insights and keep things rocking on Sovryn Tech.

So, if you want to see some of my secret sauce for my podcast, or you just want to get a history lesson and build a “tech education” for yourself, check out this classic episode of Computer Chronicles from 1993 about none other than…the internet…

Again, you can see the whole almost-20-years of the show totally for free online, so if you liked what you saw here, go for it. Watch the whole damn series if you can. I promise, you won’t be disappointed. Stewart Cheifet was/is “The Man”, and Computer Chronicles proved it week after week. This is video gold, and journalism at a level that I can only hope to scratch with Sovryn Tech and my other projects.

Carpe lucem!

DISCLAIMER: The ZOG Blog is the part of this site where Dr. Brian Sovryn can talk about anything. From pop culture, to philosophy, to just sharing updates with what’s going on at Zomia Offline Games and with other projects.